WikiLeaks Faces New Competition

WikiLeaks, the document-leaking website that has come under intense pressure after publishing classified U.S. military documents, is facing a new challenge: competition.

A group that includes former WikiLeaks staffers who left the organization after disagreements with founder Julian Assange is pursuing plans for a rival document-leaking venture, said people familiar with their plans.

These people said one of the leaders of the new initiative is Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a top WikiLeaks lieutenant who quit in September. Mr. Domscheit-Berg, a German, is planning to launch new technology to assist whistle-blowers who want to leak documents, said people with knowledge of the matter.

"There is some indication that Daniel and some others are setting up a similar venue, and we wish them luck," said Kristinn Hrafnsson, a WikiLeaks spokesman, in a recent interview in London. "It would be good to have more organizations like WikiLeaks."

Another site that publishes leaked documents and top-secret information is cryptome.org, which among other things has published leaks about WikiLeaks. Secrecy News, a blog written by the scientist Steven Aftergood, publishes government documents about the military, diplomacy and other matters.

Mr. Hrafnsson said another WikiLeaks insider, a "technician," also quit the group and that "two or three volunteers" have left. He declined to identify them. He said reports of friction within WikiLeaks are "quite overblown."

In media interviews since leaving WikiLeaks, Mr. Domscheit-Berg has complained that the group, while pursuing the leaks about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that dramatically raised the site's profile, has neglected to publish a stack of lower-profile but still important documents it has received from other parts of the world.

Speaking at an event in London last week, Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks has temporarily stopped accepting new documents because it has too large a backlog and not enough resources to publish them at the moment. He gave no details.

"I think it is not right to be receiving documents that people may wish to get out urgently if you're not in a position to publish them within a reasonable period of time," Mr. Assange said.

The U.S. has sharply criticized WikiLeaks for publishing thousands of classified U.S. military documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. is investigating how the documents reached the website.

Private First Class Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, was arrested in May and charged with giving WikiLeaks a video that shows an Apache helicopter firing on Iraqi civilians.

Mr. Assange has also come under fire in Sweden, where prosecutors are investigating allegations that he raped one woman and molested another. He has denied the allegations and called them an attempt to smear him. On Thursday, Swedish prosecutors said the investigation is continuing, but that they couldn't predict when they would make any decisions.

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper this week, Mr. Assange said he is considering seeking asylum in Switzerland, without elaborating.

This pressure, along with apparent resentment about Mr. Assange's leadership style and strategy, has caused friction inside WikiLeaks.

"Julian Assange reacted to any criticism with the allegation that I was disobedient to him and disloyal to the project," the German magazine Der Spiegel quoted Mr. Domscheit-Berg as saying in a September interview.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Assange was in Geneva Thursday, calling on the U.S. to investigate possible human-rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq that have been raised by the WikiLeaks documents.

"It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up," the AP quoted him as telling reporters near United Nations headquarters in Geneva, where on Friday the U.S. will face a review of its human-rights record.

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